State of the Adriane
It has been entirely too long since I've read, let alone written here at Livejournal. I've missed your trials and joys and have spent last few days catching up on as much as I can. Now, I will attempt to give you an overview of how things have been here in my corner of the world.
1. Rick is still working evenings and nights. This means that we are still eating dinner at 4:30 in the afternoon and that the kids and I generally haven't made it out of the house after then. I have a thing for sunlight and when the sun sets at 6:00, it really seems that it's too cold to go out. I'm so grateful that the solstice has passed and the days are getting longer. Rick's schedule means that I'm home alone with the kids, virtually a single parent, except for the 1-2 hours that he's awake after school. I don't complain, I'm grateful for the hard work he puts in and I know he doesn't like the schedule either, but sometimes, its hard. Particularly when it comes to Nathan.
2. Nathan was becoming impossible for me to handle and we had to consider sending him to the Children's Resource Center for a few weeks of observation. Nathan's been struggling with being deceitful, manipulative, enraged, and suicidal for the past several months. I have been called to the school many times because of his comments to other kids in class. Particularly, his first girlfriend, whom broke up with him and Nathan felt was the end of the world. They wouldn't leave each other alone, and Nathan wrote her a letter about how he didn't deserve her, etc. The girl decided that Nathan might hurt himself and told the school. The school's position wasn't concern that Nathan may hurt himself, but that the letter he wrote could be considered "menacing" and that the girl would be upset if he did do something to hurt himself. (I read the letter, there were no threats of any sort in the letter, I'm not sure where the principal was getting her impressions). The principal told us that she was going to recommend suspension and expulsion over this incident. Since then, we have been to three emergency evaluations at CRC and Nathan's mental state got worse. The counselors, Rick and I have been trying to track his moods and reactions so we can determine if this is just anger issues, teenager hormones, or if he's bi-polar like his mother. Last month, he told a friend at school that he was going to hurt himself and we went on 24 hour suicide watch. Recently, he has been better in all aspects...until today. Today I discovered that he's been lying, sneaking and doing things that he's not supposed to. Who knows if it ever really stopped? It is an exhausting situation, one that seems hopeless at times. I have faith that it will get better eventually.
3. I have been depressed. My depression started in May when I started having medical issues. In August my doctor was of no help. When I gave her my symptoms and what I felt the problem could be, she told me that I was too young to be peri-menopausal and that my problems must all be related to depression. Yes, I agreed with her, I was in a depressed mood, but who wouldn't be if you were in PMS mode for 4 months with no relief? The problems started in May and continued into September, and I'm sure issues at home didn't help the situation.
4. We are having a baby in July. This news came as a shock to me and my world was rocked to the core. What had we done? What were we going to do? I didn't want this. Rick, fortunately, was thrilled from the get-go. I went from being mildly depressed to full fledged depression where I didn't get out of bed or shower or even try to be a mother to the kids. On days that I would get up and get dressed, I cheered for myself. I lost my appetite and lost my weight. I felt apathetic towards the baby, I told Rick and our friends that I had till July to get excited and leave me alone about it. I was constantly sick, had heartburn, couldn't sleep, and had migraines that lasted for 4-5 days at a time. Many weeks I counted 4 migraines for the week, the kind that you absolutely can't function, and now, I couldn't take my medication because I was pregnant. You can imagine how much more that affected my depression. I am now well into my second trimester and while I'm still not excited per say, I am happy, and I'm sure now that I'll be excited by July. :)
5. We told the kids about the baby and they're excited. Nathan's mother is also pregnant, with twins. Nathan is accepting the whole thing well, and is a little excited about having a baby around. Surprisingly, he likes babies. He's not sure about going from the oldest of 3 (Nathan, Makellen, and his mother's son Michael) to the oldest of 6 in a matter of months (Rebecca is due 4 weeks before me). Makellen, however, broke down into tears when we told her. She was out of control, from happiness we figured out after a few minutes. She has been given her greatest dream, being a big sister. That being said, you can imagine how I felt at the doctor's office when they told me that they couldn't find the baby, and that perhaps my body was fooling us or the pregnancy wasn't viable. I wasn't concerned for me, because I still wasn't convinced this was a good thing anyway, but my heart broke at the thought of having to tell Makellen. Turns out the midwife using the sonogram wasn't familiar with the equipment and when someone else did the scan, everything was fine. The entire experience was a roller coaster I didn't need.
6. We hosted Christmas at our house. I had no desire to have people at my house for any reason. Christmas also meant I had to go out and go shopping when I didn't want to even leave my bed. I argued with my family about Christmas decorations. I have an average of 4 Christmas trees up every year, as well as other decorations. I love Christmas! This year, however, we had a tree up because people were coming and Makellen begged me, and I put out some of the bells we have because they were in the same box as a the tree. People finally left and the entire thing is over. Next year will be better, a small part of me missed Christmas this year.
7. Politics at my church job are getting thick. We still don't have a permanent pastor, no one is signing up to work on the problem, and there is a group of people who are busy trying to convince our congregation that we should vote to allow gays, lesbians, and transsexuals to be pastors. I understand the need and the reason to get the vote done so we can give the imput to the regional church. However, while there are people in these categories at our church, none of them are trying to pursue a career in being a pastor. I would think it's more important to actually get a pastor at our church and make sure the church continues next year when the interim pastor leaves THEN focus on the different issues. And there are other agendas at work, that's just the most recent one that my poor pregnant memory can remember at the moment. While the cat's away, the mice do play. I just hope there is a church still there at the end.
8. Mary Kay has slowed down tremendously for the moment. Can't imagine why! No, really, with everything else going on in my life and my general lack of desire to get out of bed has caused me to not have appointments for the past few months. Fortunately, my customers still order online and call for re-orders, so I haven't been totally penniless. My focus is to get the appointments back on track for January.
9. The weather has been delightful. For any of you not in the Ohio area, I have to say that I've been enjoying the weather. We have had two dustings of snow, and most of our days have been in the upper 50's, lower 60's! There has been quite a bit of rain, days and days of it at times. Anther reason to be grateful for the weather, they say that one inch of rain equals 8 inches of snow. We would be even deeper than Denver if it had been cold!
Well, there you have it. I'm sure that are more items, but those are the ones I remember at the moment. Hopefully, if I can't remember them, they have resolved themselves or they weren't that important in the first place.
Here's to a new and exciting New Year!!
1. Rick is still working evenings and nights. This means that we are still eating dinner at 4:30 in the afternoon and that the kids and I generally haven't made it out of the house after then. I have a thing for sunlight and when the sun sets at 6:00, it really seems that it's too cold to go out. I'm so grateful that the solstice has passed and the days are getting longer. Rick's schedule means that I'm home alone with the kids, virtually a single parent, except for the 1-2 hours that he's awake after school. I don't complain, I'm grateful for the hard work he puts in and I know he doesn't like the schedule either, but sometimes, its hard. Particularly when it comes to Nathan.
2. Nathan was becoming impossible for me to handle and we had to consider sending him to the Children's Resource Center for a few weeks of observation. Nathan's been struggling with being deceitful, manipulative, enraged, and suicidal for the past several months. I have been called to the school many times because of his comments to other kids in class. Particularly, his first girlfriend, whom broke up with him and Nathan felt was the end of the world. They wouldn't leave each other alone, and Nathan wrote her a letter about how he didn't deserve her, etc. The girl decided that Nathan might hurt himself and told the school. The school's position wasn't concern that Nathan may hurt himself, but that the letter he wrote could be considered "menacing" and that the girl would be upset if he did do something to hurt himself. (I read the letter, there were no threats of any sort in the letter, I'm not sure where the principal was getting her impressions). The principal told us that she was going to recommend suspension and expulsion over this incident. Since then, we have been to three emergency evaluations at CRC and Nathan's mental state got worse. The counselors, Rick and I have been trying to track his moods and reactions so we can determine if this is just anger issues, teenager hormones, or if he's bi-polar like his mother. Last month, he told a friend at school that he was going to hurt himself and we went on 24 hour suicide watch. Recently, he has been better in all aspects...until today. Today I discovered that he's been lying, sneaking and doing things that he's not supposed to. Who knows if it ever really stopped? It is an exhausting situation, one that seems hopeless at times. I have faith that it will get better eventually.
3. I have been depressed. My depression started in May when I started having medical issues. In August my doctor was of no help. When I gave her my symptoms and what I felt the problem could be, she told me that I was too young to be peri-menopausal and that my problems must all be related to depression. Yes, I agreed with her, I was in a depressed mood, but who wouldn't be if you were in PMS mode for 4 months with no relief? The problems started in May and continued into September, and I'm sure issues at home didn't help the situation.
4. We are having a baby in July. This news came as a shock to me and my world was rocked to the core. What had we done? What were we going to do? I didn't want this. Rick, fortunately, was thrilled from the get-go. I went from being mildly depressed to full fledged depression where I didn't get out of bed or shower or even try to be a mother to the kids. On days that I would get up and get dressed, I cheered for myself. I lost my appetite and lost my weight. I felt apathetic towards the baby, I told Rick and our friends that I had till July to get excited and leave me alone about it. I was constantly sick, had heartburn, couldn't sleep, and had migraines that lasted for 4-5 days at a time. Many weeks I counted 4 migraines for the week, the kind that you absolutely can't function, and now, I couldn't take my medication because I was pregnant. You can imagine how much more that affected my depression. I am now well into my second trimester and while I'm still not excited per say, I am happy, and I'm sure now that I'll be excited by July. :)
5. We told the kids about the baby and they're excited. Nathan's mother is also pregnant, with twins. Nathan is accepting the whole thing well, and is a little excited about having a baby around. Surprisingly, he likes babies. He's not sure about going from the oldest of 3 (Nathan, Makellen, and his mother's son Michael) to the oldest of 6 in a matter of months (Rebecca is due 4 weeks before me). Makellen, however, broke down into tears when we told her. She was out of control, from happiness we figured out after a few minutes. She has been given her greatest dream, being a big sister. That being said, you can imagine how I felt at the doctor's office when they told me that they couldn't find the baby, and that perhaps my body was fooling us or the pregnancy wasn't viable. I wasn't concerned for me, because I still wasn't convinced this was a good thing anyway, but my heart broke at the thought of having to tell Makellen. Turns out the midwife using the sonogram wasn't familiar with the equipment and when someone else did the scan, everything was fine. The entire experience was a roller coaster I didn't need.
6. We hosted Christmas at our house. I had no desire to have people at my house for any reason. Christmas also meant I had to go out and go shopping when I didn't want to even leave my bed. I argued with my family about Christmas decorations. I have an average of 4 Christmas trees up every year, as well as other decorations. I love Christmas! This year, however, we had a tree up because people were coming and Makellen begged me, and I put out some of the bells we have because they were in the same box as a the tree. People finally left and the entire thing is over. Next year will be better, a small part of me missed Christmas this year.
7. Politics at my church job are getting thick. We still don't have a permanent pastor, no one is signing up to work on the problem, and there is a group of people who are busy trying to convince our congregation that we should vote to allow gays, lesbians, and transsexuals to be pastors. I understand the need and the reason to get the vote done so we can give the imput to the regional church. However, while there are people in these categories at our church, none of them are trying to pursue a career in being a pastor. I would think it's more important to actually get a pastor at our church and make sure the church continues next year when the interim pastor leaves THEN focus on the different issues. And there are other agendas at work, that's just the most recent one that my poor pregnant memory can remember at the moment. While the cat's away, the mice do play. I just hope there is a church still there at the end.
8. Mary Kay has slowed down tremendously for the moment. Can't imagine why! No, really, with everything else going on in my life and my general lack of desire to get out of bed has caused me to not have appointments for the past few months. Fortunately, my customers still order online and call for re-orders, so I haven't been totally penniless. My focus is to get the appointments back on track for January.
9. The weather has been delightful. For any of you not in the Ohio area, I have to say that I've been enjoying the weather. We have had two dustings of snow, and most of our days have been in the upper 50's, lower 60's! There has been quite a bit of rain, days and days of it at times. Anther reason to be grateful for the weather, they say that one inch of rain equals 8 inches of snow. We would be even deeper than Denver if it had been cold!
Well, there you have it. I'm sure that are more items, but those are the ones I remember at the moment. Hopefully, if I can't remember them, they have resolved themselves or they weren't that important in the first place.
Here's to a new and exciting New Year!!